I applied online.

The process took four weeks and was well organised, extremely well communicated, and enjoyable. I applied through their website after stumbling across a YouTube video of a talk by the SVP who leads the engineering organisation, and thinking this is someone I can definitely learn from. It started with an email directly from the above-mentioned SVP, who seemed to be running point on the hiring for this role, responding to my application. I scheduled a thirty-minute interview, with some context about the concerns with my resume for me to prepare to address. There was immediate positive feedback during the interview and a few days later another general interview with the hiring Director, which was also enjoyable. Follow-up was a few days later, though it required two additional weeks to wait for an interview day.

The interviews were all pretty short, chat-style, and focused on cultural, experience, process, and behavioral fit. None were technical, as I'm assuming that would have followed in the next step. It included the SVP about management, a pair of tech leads on leadership and experience, a pair of Product Managers on process, work with product, and cultural fit, and a pair of the engineers from the team covering day-to-day leadership challenges scenarios. Unfortunately for me, I came right after a few larger company interviews that week and did not make the proper switch to a lean startup context and content. So even though I spent most of my career in such an environment, I guess I came through as a corporate guy. Though the interviews were short, I was left with enough time for questions in most of them.

A generic rejection email was received at the end of the week. However, I replied asking for specific feedback and got immediate, focused, and dead-honest bullet-point-level feedback. This, for me, was just another indication that I missed out on a great opportunity.

Tell me about a time you introduced and led change in your team.